Sunday, November 28, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving America???Yes this past week was Thanksgiving Day in the USA and the beginning of their Holiday Season. And once again Americans revisit their highly inventive Myths about their history in which the Colonialists were angelic peace loving tolerant souls rather than the rapacious , greedy materialistic , religious fanatics that many of them actually were.

When will America grow up and come to terms with its real history instead of inventing more Myths about American righteousness and Exceptionalism.So who are the real savages who kill murder with impunity.

American Imperialism from Wounded Knee to Mi Li to Abu Ghraib and FallujahWounded Knee Massacre 1890

The claim is that that many of the early settlers left Europe to find a place where they could freely practice their religion . They claimed the other European Christians were persecuting them. But many of these early settlers were part of a rather conservative intolerant Christians sects which had tried to foist their beliefs on everybody and not just practice their own faith without interfering with the religious faith and practices of others. Other settlers arriving in the 18th and 19th century were being oppressed and dispossessed driven off of their lands as part of ethnic cleansing as the British did in the Highlands of Scotland known as the Highland Clearances or when they kicked the Irish off of their lands and left to starve by the Brits and their Scottish collaborators and quislings .

William S. Burroughs "Thanksgiving Day Prayer

and now Rush Limbaugh who claims the Europeans did not invade the Americas . Is Limbaugh saying then what? the European settler/invaders asked the Native Americans for permission to land and to take over two continents from the Arctic circle the tundra down to the southern most tip of South America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Limbaugh seems to want to imply that the Native Americans were not then or now the equals of these superior Europeans who had the Christian God who is also the God of Capitalism on their side.

Limbaugh thinks the number of Native Americans killed by the Europeans is an insignificant number. But we know historically the War against the Indians lasted for over five centuries. The number of Native Americans killed is estimated at tens of millions.

The Christian Europeans characterized the Native peoples as backward as heathens who refused to become Christians.They were further demonized as vicious savages who were the spawn of Satan who deserved to be wiped off of the face of the earth. The European Settler invaders characterized native Americans as having less regard for human life than did the Europeans. And sometimes the Native Americans tried to fight back. They were the desperate insurgents fighting to protect their lands and their way of life. Limbaugh and others of his ilk are dismissive of the wrongs done to Native Americans over the centuries.

Once the native Peoples had been ethnically cleansed til only a remnant was left were forced onto "Reservations" which often were void of suitable arable land for growing crops or having little or no game to hunt or fish.

Limbaugh suggest the current native Americans are somehow being coddled by the US government. Or he suggests the Native Americans are still taking advantage of the European settlers with their Gambling Casinos and their government subsidized "Reservations".

Limbaugh also is critical of the Native Americans because he believes they were basically socialists and communists who held property in common . Again he sets this up to prove the Capitalism and mercantile system and even the use of slaves was an improved system over whatever system Native Americans had. So he would argue in the competition of market shares and exploitation of natural resources the Native Americans didn't have a clue and so were the "Losers" who should stop whining about having lost on a fair and even playing field. So were the thousands of massacres of Native Americans all justified and nothing for the European settlers to feel a little guilty about. No of course not .

In Iraq for instance the Indigenous peoples of Iraq Limbaugh and other American conservatives argue that they lacked gratitude for being invaded/ liberated by the Noble and unselfish Americans. But America had no legal or moral right to invade Iraq and then slaughter a half-million to one and a half million Iraqis. Yes 9/11 was a great tragedy and an evil act but the Iraqis and Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attack.

Now Limbaugh , the Christian Zionists, the Neocons and Neoliberals are all gung ho to attack Iran and slaughter a couple of million more people based upon the erroneous belief that Iran is a direct imminent and present danger to the USA.This belief is based in part upon the notion that Iran nor any other country has a right to control their own natural resources and to be concerned with its own interests before the interests of Americans. This belief is also based upon a belief in American exceptionalism and that America is God's chosen Nation and is the New Jerusalem or The City on the Hill. But many other nations make or have made similar claims such as the British when they had their Empire they believed they were the chosen people who were a source of benevolence to the various peoples of the world. Of course the peoples of the various nations didn't quite see it that way as the Brits invaded and conquered one nation after another slaughtering any who dared to resist. This can also be said about the various colonial powers of Europe ie french, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese etc.

Rush Limbaugh tried to rain on Barack Obama's Thanksgiving Day parade, lashing out against a proclamation issued by the president to honor the national holiday and the story behind it.

He also went on the war path against Native Americans, calling for a look at the "scoreboard" of number of people killed since European settlers arrived, and insisting that "a bunch of Native Americans scammed us" in the deal to purchase Manhattan.

As found in the show's transcript, Limbaugh interprets Obama's version of events:

We were the invaders. The Indians are minding their own business. We were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves. So they came along and showed us how, and that's what Thanksgiving is all about. Now, he says nothing about the Constitution in his Thanksgiving proclamation, because he's got a problem with it ... Every cliche that is wrong about Thanksgiving shows up in his proclamation

Obama did acknowledge George Washington, who declared the first nationally recognized Thanksgiving when the Constitution was enacted. Limbaugh didn't further clarify why the document from 1787 required a mention, even though the holiday's roots are generally traced back to at least 150 years earlier and it wouldn't become a regular national holiday until more than 75 years later.

Insisting that he thought the presidential proclamation seemed like a "phony," "parody," "hoax" and "prank," Limbaugh then offered his own interpretation of the holiday's significance:

[Obama] said that Thanksgiving is about the Indians saving us, with their agriculture and everything else. The true story of Thanksgiving is socialism failed. Of course we showed them gratitude! We shared our bounty with them, not because we didn't know how to make it. It was because we first failed as socialists. Only when we turned capitalists did we have plenty. The Indians didn't teach us capitalism.

Limbaugh punctuated his pre-Thanksgiving show with shots at Native Americans, joking that Obama had said their "rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage ... at their casinos and on their reservations." He immediately made it clear he was making that last bit up.

The host also argued that more people have been killed from lung cancer, "thanks to the Indian-invented custom of smoking tobacco," than from the arrival of Europeans and their wars and diseases. "Where are our reparations?" asked the well-known cigar smoker.

And despite his problems evaluating the recent Manhattan real estate market, Limbaugh had another look at the one from 1626. "We got shafted when we bought Manhattan," he claimed, saying that European settlers initially paid a Long Island tribe that didn't own the land, then had to repurchase it from the actual owners. "We got scammed ... we got hosed ... we paid for Manna-hata twice because a bunch of Native Americans scammed us."

In the long run, there hasn't been much buyer's remorse on behalf of the settlers.

As agitated as the conservative commentator was over Obama's buckle-hat tip to Native Americans, Media Matters notes that another well-known conservative named Ronald Reagan did the same in his 1981 proclamation:

On this day of thanksgiving, it is appropriate that we recall the first Thanksgiving, celebrated in the autumn of 1621. After surviving a bitter winter, the Pilgrims planted and harvested a bountiful crop. After the harvest they gathered their families together and joined in celebration and prayer with the Native Americans who had taught them so much. Clearly our forefathers were thankful not only for the material well-being of their harvest but for this abundance of goodwill as well.